


Crowley's Lullaby

by salamoonder



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Lullabies, M/M, Music, Storms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 13:43:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18262484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamoonder/pseuds/salamoonder
Summary: Crowley does not like the dark. One might even go so far as to say that Crowley is afraid of the dark (although, one should probably choose to do so out of reach of his wings, which he frequently uses to smack his dearest and oldest friend when being teased). However, Aziraphale is capable of far more comforting things than teasing.





	Crowley's Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Color Green and a Flash of Anger](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/467726) by regencysnuffboxes. 



> This was inspired by a thing that Hallie wrote about Crowley's eyes/tendency to hiss/coldbloodedness! Thanks, Hallie, for letting me write about this!

In the darkness, there is a small, nervous cough.

Aziraphale shifts slightly. He’s lying across a boulder that looks out over the garden--when it is light enough that looking out over the garden is indeed possible. His wings fan out, wide and gentle, and there’s the slightest of breezes ruffling deliciously through his feathers.

He turns towards the sound of the cough. “Erm. Yes? Who’s there?”

“Oh, um, nobody really. I was just wondering, ah, do you know...do you know if the, well, the light is coming back? Have they made any plans for it to be returned, Up There?”

Aziraphale squints into the first night at the voice--not that it does any good. “What did you say your name was?”

“Erm, it’s Crawly.”

“Right then, Crow--”

“Crawly--”

“Yes, that’s what I said--I’m sure there’s a perfectly good plan regarding the day Up There. And it’s not our place to question it, in any case.” Aziraphale sniffs in disgust.

“Ah. I see.” says the voice, even smaller than it was before.

Silence reigns yet again over the garden.

For a time, anyway. The voice returns again in earnest all too soon. “Only--only, I was wondering--if you can’t see anything, well, why are you watching over the garden?”

Aziraphale stiffens. “This is my job. Why would I be doing anything else?”

“I see,” returns the voice (sounding as though he does not see at all). And as the silence settles over them again, the dark seems to return even thicker. Only now Aziraphale is sure that he’s not alone, and he doesn’t know quite how to feel about that. Reluctantly, he pulls his sword from his belt and the night flares a brilliant violet-orange.

The snake coiled under his right wing pulls back in alarm, and then freezes in sudden awe. The awe turns to delight and then to admiration as he gazes at the flaming sword. It casts dancing, flickering shadows upon the rocks, throws long stripes of light along the ground beneath them in the garden, crackles softly like so many tiny twigs snapping, warms the night into a miniature day.

Aziraphale hums softly to himself to cover the silence, and suddenly the night is even brighter. The sword burns until light tinges the sky pink, and afterwards, once the sun and the moon and the stars have been carefully placed in their respective times, Aziraphale often spots the snake curled up in a patch of moonlight, head tilted back, eyes fixed on the soft glow of the ball of rock in the sky.

 

Music has always been part of the angelic experience. Angels have been singing before time began and they will be signing after it ends. Time being, of course, a purely human construct. However, contrary to popular belief, not all angels are good singers. Some of them are terribly off key, tone deaf, and unable to hold a rhythm to save their blessed lives. This is where the concept of having a whole host of angels comes in handy. A host of mostly gloriously exciting singers, singers who can hit unearthly notes and sustain a bass line without breathing, is not much impeded by a few screechers. Or, for that matter, a few hundred. A host, you see, is quite bigger than most people think it is. The secret is spreading the poorer singers out, metaphysically speaking, and hopefully they blend in enough that no one notices them.

Aziraphale was not quite a screecher, but he was certainly the object of more than a few unwelcome glares. He found immense joy in the eternal song, but he couldn’t quite find the place for his particular harmony among the voices of his own kind and thus his voice tended to stand out painfully. He wasn’t bad, per se, he was just...different.

He discovered quite by accident that out of context of the uncountable angels that made up the heavenly choir, he actually sounded quite good. Singing quietly to himself, chanting in hebrew or latin or greek from the solitude of an empty temple or a wooded grove or a quiet street, Aziraphale realized that he was a soloist.

This was quite alarming until he realized that it meant he could carry music with him wherever he went, and thus create the illusion that he was not a solitary angel, alone at his post on Earth. So Aziraphale sings the myriad of human hymns and unearthly melodies whenever it seems to him that the silence surrounding him has gone on too long, and by the end of it, he always feels at least a little bit better.

It is not long before he is adopting other music; music not strictly for the glory of Him. Aziraphale has an uncomfortable feeling deep down that he shouldn’t, but he is unable to restrain himself from lurking on the outskirts of human music, of soaking it in deep down in his soul.  
Music, as any musician can tell you, may sometimes be sweeter and more addictive than any drug.

Aziraphale falls one step further, though; he begins to compose. To create, to manufacture art deliberately without the puzzling nature of a human, to make new without express permission....it is even more deeply forbidden. He can feel it in his bones and in his borrowed blood, running through him like white hot fire.

It is early in his job, and he has not yet figured freedom out yet. He has not figured out how to fudge the game a little.

Now, none of this angelic heresy sees the light; initially, it hides in dusty notebooks and in Aziraphale’s head and heart. Not a note of it is sung out loud. Not until he has passed a good four thousand years on Earth.

 

It is...oh, years and years into the arrangement, long enough that Aziraphale has already stopped keeping track, but not long enough that Crowley has. The passage of time is strange and fluid and while it seems to many that the world is ancient and unknowable, sometimes Aziraphale feels as though the fall was just yesterday.

He can still feel that first raindrop.

He blinks, looks up. It is also a possibility that it has begun raining while he sat outside, reading (but not really) the paper. Cherry blossoms are fluttering to the ground all around him, swirling pink into the bruise colored sky. Thunder rumbles deep and far off, and Aziraphale neatly folds his paper and retreats back inside his _minka_.

It’s a late, lazy afternoon, nearly evening, and Aziraphale puts the kettle on and picks up a book and allows the low grumble of thunder to lull him into a pleasant stupor.

The loud knock at his door a few minutes later startles him enough that he accidentally manifests his wings, knocking a few books from their careful stack. He scrambles to pick them up, muttering, “Good gracious,” to himself in annoyance.

He hurries to the door to find Crowley shielding his head from the oncoming rain with his wings and looking distinctly awkward and miserable. Aziraphale opens the door at once, somewhat vexed, but when Crowley stumbles in and half falls against him all traces of anger melt away.

“My dear,” he starts, “did something happen?”

Crowley shakes his head and carefully extends his wings to wrap both himself and Aziraphale in a tangle of feathers and more human limbs.

“Jusssst...remembering,” he says, and casts a baleful eye at the darkening clouds.

It is quite amazing that, no matter how often a thing happens, it will sometimes pull you directly back to the first time that it happens, and there is no escaping the memories and feelings that follow. The first storm brought uncertainty and fear with it, but most of all it brought darkness.

Crowley hates darkness. Always has and, Aziraphale suspects, always will. Crowley hates not knowing things, hates being defenseless in a universe that is much bigger than even beings as powerful and ancient as themselves.

Every storm since has been a reminder of the fall, a reminder of the small tokens given to him as a result of bringing knowledge to the world that he will never get rid of. His eyes, slitted and snakelike in whichever form he takes, no matter how otherworldy or odd, and his voice, slipping invariably on each “s” in moments of tension, fear, arousal, or excitement. And the cold, seeping into him at the first opportunity, all of creation conspiring to snatch the heat from his body. The first snake, and the father of all since.

Aziraphale lets out a long suffering sigh, gathers the shaking demon to his chest, and carries him into the main living space.

They lie on the floor, and Aziraphale squints carefully at his friend, and Crowley removes his sunglasses with a shaking hand and swoops a wing over his face.

Aziraphale lays a warm hand on the demon’s shoulder, and then reaches another hand around to his back, and then pulls him closer, until Crowley is lying, wide eyed, across Aziraphale’s wing, his own spread out over both of them like a feathery tent. The shaking continues, rooted in a fear so integral to Crowley’s nature that Aziraphale is not sure he can ever soothe it...and a strange thing happens.

Aziraphale begins to sing. Quietly, almost under his breath, to a tune he has neither heard nor sung before, in words that have never taken this particular order, pulled from experience and fear and what someone else might call love, but what Aziraphale is referring to in his head (for the sake of keeping some semblance of purity) as angelic duty. It went something like this.

_Sleep, though there be no moonlight,  
Dream though hell be near;  
The endless dark will lose its bite_

_Storms will quiet with day bright;  
My watchful eye stills your fear  
Sleep, though there be no moonlight_

_Celestial forces whirl on through night  
Among the clouds their ships they steer,  
The endless dark will lose its bite_

_Below the earth stalk beasts of might,  
Upon it spell-laced unicorns rear;  
Sleep, though there be no moonlight_

_Above, beneath, life strong and slight  
Yet none may harm while I am here;  
The endless dark will lose its bite_

_Sleep, may your eyes give up the fight  
Through the night I will hold you, my dear;  
Sleep, though there be no moonlight;  
The endless dark will lose its bite._

When Aziraphale glanced back over at Crowley his eyes were closed, and his chest rose and fell as steadily as the beat of the rain outside.


End file.
